Literary Fiction

AN OBSERVER TOP TEN DEBUT 2020 'The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting for. An explosive work that reels from sex, to sin, to salvation all the...

On Beauty by Zadie Smith, author of the prize-winning White Teeth, is a funny, powerful and moving story about love and family. Set in New England mainly and London partly,...

‘Chip told us not to go out. Said, don't you boys tempt the devil. But it been one brawl of a night, I tell you.’ The aftermath of the fall...

A stunning, powerfully evocative new novel based on a true story — in 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving...

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump but they...

A debut novel by one of the most exciting African literary voices to emerge in recent years Maya grows up in Germany in the shadow of her beautiful, volatile mother-...

‘The book I wish I’d written? Whatever Hari Kunzru is publishing next’ — Aravind Adiga ‘Astonishing, absorbing, terrifying. Immensely good.’ — Philip Pullman ‘Red Pill stands as a final blast...

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump. The Cheffe is born into an impoverished family in Sainte-Bazeille in south-western France, but when she takes a job working in the kitchen...

A New York Times Editor's Choice A Herald's Best Summer Book French teenager Margot is the illegitimate daughter of a prominent stage actress and an influential politician. The comings and...

Shortlisted for the Fiction category in the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature Discovered amidst a tangle of sea grape trees, Moshe Fisher's provenance is a thing of myth and...

A haunting and elegiac love story set in a spoiled paradise, as vital and as relevant today as when it was first published. A single lighted match banishes Triton from...

A teacher asked me a question, and I opened my mouth as a sort of formality but closed it softly, knowing with perfect certainty that nothing would ever come out...

A chance sighting on a bus; a letter which should never have been read; a pianist with a secret that touches the heart of her music... AN EQUAL MUSIC is...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZEMrs Death tells her intoxicating story in this life-affirming fire-starter of a novel.Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted from an eternity of her...

'This is where I begin. This blank page draws me nearer to you, the day sweltering, my courage quickens, the curtains billowing and the punkah swaying, the punkah rattling as...

Translated by Donal McLaughlin Part Odyssey of the Persian Gulf and part 1001 Nights in Europe, this debut novel is drawn from the author’s experiences as a political prisoner and...

*** ONE OF THE OBSERVER'S 10 MUST-READ DEBUT NOVELISTS OF 2022 *** Sayon Hughes, a young Black man from Bristol, dreams of a world far removed from the one in...

A novel about lovers, fathers and sons. About vulnerability, losses, love and regrets. Achike Okoro is an up-and-coming actor, soon to star in the career-making film 'Here Again Now.' His...

Translated by Marilyn Booth An extraordinary novel from a 'remarkable' Booker Prize-winning author who has 'constructed her own novelistic form' (James Wood, The New Yorker) that follows one young Omani...

From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel - his first since winning the Nobel...

An emotional, tender and funny novel from award-winning author Alecia McKenzie that asks, what does family mean to you?Seeking solitude after a personal tragedy upends his world, artist Chris travels...

The long-awaited new novel from one of America's most highly regarded contemporary writers, The Committed follows the Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris as a refugee. There he and his...

Translated by Sunandini Banerjee May 1992. In Russia, Boris Yeltsin is showing millions of communists the spectre of capitalism. Yugoslavia is disintegrating. United Germany is uncertain about their next move,...

Glory arrives back in Peckham, from her seemingly-glamorous life in LA, to mourn the sudden death of her father, and finds her previously-close family has fallen apart in her absence....

A stunning new reissue of one of the most iconic fictional debuts of all time, to mark the 25th anniversary of this modern classicFirst published in the year 2000, Zadie...

An auteur, together with his lead actors, is at a prestigious European festival to premiere his latest film. Alone one morning at a backstreet cafe, he strikes up a conversation...

**New York Times bestseller** A Guardian / Observer Book of the Year When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult...

The Pizzeria Vesuvio looks like any other Italian restaurant in London — with a few small differences. The chefs who make the pizza fiorentinas are Sri Lankan, and half the...

Jasmine Aimaq's stunning debut explores Afghanistan on the eve of a violent revolution and the far-reaching consequences of a young Kochi girl's tragic death. Afghanistan, 1970s. Born to an American...

From National Book Award–nominated writer Andrea Lee comes Red Island House, a travel epic that opens a window on the mysterious African island of Madagascar, and on the dangers of...

In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of...

The new novel about the present, the past, and the slippage between private and public life — from a writer who has 'like Proust, mastered the art of the moment.'...

The Remains of the Day won the 1989 Booker Prize and cemented Kazuo Ishiguro's place as one of the world's greatest writers. David Lodge, chairman of the judges in 1989, said,...

A rite-of-passage novel in the life of a young gay man growing up in a colourful and chaotic dictatorship Riverrun is a novel that talks about the rite of passage...

This story came to me and entered my soul. It did not need a key or an invite, for it already belonged. It walked in, shook my foundation and set...

A funny, gripping and surprising story of a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew, by award-winning author Chibundu Onuzo. Anna grew up...

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, A House for Mr Biswasis V. S. Naipaul's best-loved novel; one of BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. Heart-rending and...

Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the...

Translated by Elisabeth Lauffer24 MUST-READ 2022 BOOKS IN TRANSLATION as selected by BOOK RIOTIt’s 2011 and the Arab Spring is in full bloom when the discovery of two bodies in...

Driven by a deep-seated desire to understand his mother's life before he was born, Derek Owusu offers a powerful imagining of her journey. As she moves from Ghana to the...

Introduced by Petina Gappah, a lost classic by a radical Black South African author: as exiled African activists in post-war London plot to revolutionise their native countries, idealism and tragedy...

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**An extraordinary depiction of the life of an immigrant, as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his...

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**Vehement, comic and shrewd, Abdulrazak Gurnah's first novel is an unwavering contemplation of East African coastal lifePoverty and depravity wreak havoc...

A searing tale of a young woman discovering her troubled family history and cultural past, by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace...

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**A dazzling tale of cultural identity and displacement, this is the story of a man's escape from his native Zanzibar to...

Five Stories of Music and Nightfall An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past. 'It was our third time playing the Godfather theme since lunch.' In...

Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by...

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION‘A mighty achievement’ OCEAN VUONG‘Beautiful, brilliant’ R. F. KUANG‘Dazzling’ OBSERVER‘Will shatter your heart’ GLAMOUR‘Powerful’ SUNDAY TIMESAn extraordinary story of the journey of one young...

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023Bestselling author Laline Paull returns with an immersive and transformative new novel of an ocean world — its extraordinary creatures, mysteries, and mythologies...

A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black British artists falling in and out of love Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black...